Sundance ‘25: Sorry, Baby

Sorry, Baby, one of the last movies I saw at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is just the kind of independent debut you hope to uncover. Written, directed, and starring Eva Victor (previously known for her role on Billions), its lived-in story of an attempt to heal after trauma strikes a strong balance between sentiment and comedy. With A24 snatching up the distribution rights post-premiere, it’s one to watch out for in theaters this year.

Victor introduces us to protagonist Agnes, a young English professor at a small northeastern college, by way of her friendship with Lydie (Naomi Ackie, British and gay and delightful in her role). Lydie, who’s now happily married in New York City, stays with Agnes at the house they once shared as grad students at the college. Lydie’s worried about Agnes, asking if she ever leaves the house and gesturing at that undisclosed past event that’s still affecting her. Agnes is stuck in a kind of arrested development. 

At dinner with the rest of their grad cohort, everyone but Agnes is checking off that list of adulthood to-do’s: buying houses, moving in with partners, et cetera. One former cohort member in particular keeps bringing up how Agnes was their old advisor’s favorite, making Agnes visibly uncomfortable. Over the few days they spend together Victor carefully unveils different layers to Agnes’ personality and backstory, letting the audience piece together who she is now rather than just—as so many movies now do—laying it all out there in blatant exposition.

A throughline in these introductory scenes is Lydie and Agnes’s closeness and the way they care for each other—Lydie reaching for Agnes’ hand under the table at the dinner, falling asleep together on the couch, Lydie telling Agnes she’s pregnant as she’s sitting on the toilet while Agnes brushes her teeth. Both Ackie and Victor have an easy chemistry together, and combined with the natural, lived-in dialogue, their friendship emanates off the screen, making it easy to get invested in their story. Agnes might be a little caustic and a little hard to read, but the sweetness in her personality comes through. “Do you miss me even though you’re married?” she asks Lydie at one point, and she’s obviously overjoyed when Lydie tells her she’s having a baby.

Victor smartly sets her story up in a non-linear fashion. After the first part, with a title card reading “The Year With the Baby,” we flash back to Lydie and Agnes’s time in grad school with “The Year With the Bad Thing.” Agnes is getting both effusive praise and after-class texts from her advisor Decker (Louis Cancelmi), who toes the line of appropriateness by mentioning his ex and his child and inviting Agnes to his house one day to discuss her thesis. We don’t go inside with Agnes; instead, Victor lingers on a street shot of the house in the daytime when Agnes goes in, the door still closed at dusk, and at night, when Agnes stumbles out the door without speaking. 

It’s striking in its minimalism and leaves the audience to fill in the blanks. Agnes tells Lydie what happened as soon as she gets home, but Agnes’ character is set up so well that the change in her demeanor after leaving Decker’s house already says enough. In a dead-silent scene driving home and later at home, the camera focuses on Agnes’s shell-shocked face. Victor’s writing and acting both express the immediate after-effects of trauma, as the camera focuses on Agnes’s shell-shocked face in a dead-silent scene driving home and as Agnes relays her assault to Lydie in an almost dissociative state. 

The movie follows Agnes’ steps immediately after the assault and in the intervening years—”The Year With All the Questions,” “The Year With the Good Sandwich,” and finally back to present day—and the emotional core of the film holds strong alongside the humor that imbues its script. Victor started her career writing satire for the Reductress and the New Yorker’s Daily Shouts, and that background comes through in her dialogue. Agnes’ dry wit and quips feel natural, like you’re three drinks in at happy hour with your funniest friend. 

Outside of Agnes and Lydie, the characters trend more one-dimensional. There are scenes that feel both unrealistic and shoe-horned in as stumbling blocks in Agnes’ healing: the doctor who so ineptly administers her post-assault examination one wonders if it’s the 1960s and not the 2020s, the college administration members who say “we are women” after informing Agnes there’s nothing they can do because Decker has somehow transferred the very morning following the assault. Agnes’ interactions with these cardboard cutouts of characters feel more stilted than the rest of the movie, which is unfortunate as her own character development continues apace.

The supporting cast may offer little to the story, but Victor and Ackie’s performances and the material given to their characters more than makes up for it. Sorry, Baby handles its subject matter with grace and a story filled with both wit and heart.